


Carry Me Out

by tobiyos



Category: SK8 the Infinity (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, M/M, Past Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom/Shindo Ainosuke | Adam, largely canon compliant, unless the next episode kicks my ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 20:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30111489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobiyos/pseuds/tobiyos
Summary: The music is soft, an instrumental track with a slow beat, low notes. It doesn’t sound familiar, but it’s not like Kaoru listens to much music to begin with. And it's not like it matters, either. All it has to do is put him to sleep.He counts tiles on the ceiling and listens to the music, and winces when he tries to roll over. Hospitals, he thinks angrily, as thin sheets scratch across his arms. He wonders, if he lifts his fingers, if they’ll be covered in ink stains.
Relationships: Nanjo Kojiro | Joe/Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom, Sakurayashiki Kaoru | Cherry Blossom & Shindo Ainosuke | Adam
Comments: 2
Kudos: 43





	Carry Me Out

**Author's Note:**

> GAHH Episode nine hurt.
> 
> To be fully honest, this fic is more than a little inspired by [this tik tok](https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeSGdhR6/), and also just... me postulating about Cherry as a person. There are a lot of headcanons in this, a lot of stuff that could change by the time ep 10 airs but like... Cherry...

Kaoru fucking hates hospitals.

He has since he was a child, since he was old enough to walk the hallways on his own, since he’d known what it meant to see all the closed doors, all the empty rooms and clean floors and rushing nurses, the lights that had gone out in rooms that had been full only days before.

He’d grown up in hospital rooms, by some definition. It was largely unavoidable with a sickly grandmother and a parent tasked with being her only living relation. He was so young, he didn’t question where the other children in his class were going every day when his mother picked him up and took him to spend his afternoons doing homework on reflective floors, listening to monitors beep and ventilators heaving where his grandmother couldn’t.

 _“Kaoru-kun_ ,” she’d asked him once, and her voice sounded like whisps, like the cigarettes his mother smokes with shaking hands when she doesn’t think Kaoru is looking. “ _What do you do when you’re not here, with me?_ ”

“I read,” Kaoru had lied. “and I write. A lot.”

Maybe it wasn’t a lie. He _had_ done lots of reading and writing, but he couldn’t find it within himself to tell her that there was no time he _wasn’t_ here. Kaoru slept in uncomfortable chairs, curled up in a ball and counting the rhythm of her cardiac monitor, and when it was time to go, his mother swept him up in her arms, and carried him home by herself. When Kaoru was not at school, he was at the hospital.

“ _But you do that here, Kaoru-kun_ ,” she’d said, and her voice had shaken. He’d always wondered why his grandmother’s voice trembled slightly, like a child on the verge of tears. At some point, he just began to accept that it had always done that, even when she was healthy and young, like him. He didn’t know if that was true, but he figured it couldn’t be too far off, because they were the same in every other way. From rosy hair down to long elegant figures, Kaoru had been a spitting image of his grandmother, especially once he had hit adolescence, and his shape had withered down into thin and wiry, a figure that skipped his mother and landed straight on him.

“ _What do you do with your friends?”_

“Oh,” Kaoru had said, and gone back to his homework. “I don’t have any friends.”

No matter how many hospitals you visit, and no matter how similar they are, they never, ever look the same. Doctor’s faces blur together, and mothers in hallways always cry harder with every new hallway; the lights are always too bright during the day, too dim at night. Kaoru lived in a hospital until his grandmother died, and even now, he couldn’t possibly tell you what the place looked like.

And he hates it. More than anything.

“Carla,” he croaks, and then pauses to swallow around a dry throat. His bandages are itchy, and the nurses have made the last rounds of their shifts, which means he has no intention of summoning a new face to forget just to get another glass of water.

“Yes, master.”

“Play me to sleep.”

It’s late—late enough that the TV in the corner of the room is just playing a commercial on repeat, like a broken record. He hadn’t even thought to turn the damn thing on in the first place, but Hiromi had come by with flowers earlier in the day, and Kaoru had listened to him babble aimlessly about how he needed stimuli, light, movement, even when he’s bundled up and immobile in his bed. Kaoru remembers snapping something vaguely about wanting to know where he’d suddenly gotten his abundant knowledge on human behavior from, but he’d relented, like he always does.

It’s been hard, staying cooped up like as others come and go as they please. Sometimes he sees Hiromi—sometimes Miya will tag along. Langa will wander in, looking as placid as he always does. He wonders if they’re on some kind of rotation to annoy him, just to make sure he can’t rest like a normal person. He wonders if this is what his grandmother had felt like, entertaining a little boy day in and day out, asking questions about his life, about his mother, about the things he’d learned in school.

Hiromi turned the TV on, lost the remote, and now Kaoru has to sit and watch the vase up for auction on screen spin and spin and spin. He wonders if he should just buy it himself.

Carla chimes, an affirmative tone that lets him know she’s working on his request, and he stares at the TV, the blue light cutting across the room.

When he was in college, his room had been quiet. He’d stayed with his mother still—it cost less, and allowed him to focus on honing his art, his programing skills—but his room was always empty. It wasn’t where he’d spent the first half of his life, so he’d never bothered making it a home, but suddenly the white walls and the curtained windows had become as unfamiliar as the hospital was.

He worked late, more often than not, buoyed by a sense that the more he finished, the less he had to think. He worked slowly, methodically, perfectly, and then stared at his ceiling in bed, and wondered why rest never found him.

“Carla,” he’d snap, irritably. “I can’t sleep.”

She’d whirred, a prototype still, processing the request, checking slowly if it was Kaoru asking. He was still struggling with the voice recognition software. “Some sources say music will help to calm the mind,” she’d informed. Kaoru had grunted. “Do you want me to play you some music, Kaoru-kun?”

“Fine,” he’d huffed, and gotten up to walk back to his desk. If he can’t sleep, he’ll work, and let Carla get a hang of playing sound continuously. He considered it a test, for the benefit of his program.

When he’d woken up in the morning, face pressed into the side of the desk, and Carla still humming out some low, instrumental tune, he’d developed a new way to turn his brain off long enough to get a few hours of shuteye.

He listens to her prepare a song, quicker now, then when he was in his late teens, and relaxes back against the bed.

He doesn’t want to call it a lullaby. He knows that’s what it really is, when you get down to it, but lullaby seems… inane. Juvenile. Carla’s music is nothing more than a nudge to get Kaoru to relax, something to calm an overactive heart, twitching fingers that want to move, paint, draw, write.

It’s his grandmother’s fault, he knows. For… all of it, probably. He used to sleep in hospital rooms, soothed by antiseptic and his grandmother’s labored breathing. She gave him books to read, songs to learn, paper and pens and dreams. So many dreams.

He wanted to show her how beautiful he could do anything she showed him. Calligraphy was the first, but not the last, and it had taken all of one comment from his grandmother about the sanctity of the written word, the way the things they inscribe had the ability to last more than lifetimes to leave him fascinated.

“ _From when I was a girl,”_ she’d said, and given Kaoru a set of calligraphy brushes in a golden ivory box. It was the color of their eyes, he remembered, because as sick as she got, Kaoru never saw the vibrancy slip away from the face he’d been gifted by chance. “ _I see you practicing your characters. Try and make something that lasts longer than you and me.”_

Kaoru spilled ink across her room, his clothes, his hands, and his grandmother was never upset about it, his mother never chastised him more than dry looks from behind a cigarette, from over unfamiliar slender fingers. His grandmother’s hands. Kaoru has always had his grandmother’s hands.

“ _Kaoru-kun_ ,” she’d said, one day from her hospital bed. Kaoru had let her hold his ink-stained fingers, and she’d smiled the way women in hospitals should never smile. It had made him uncomfortable. Hospitals always made him uncomfortable. “ _You won’t forget me, will you? You should never forget the people you love.”_

The music is soft, an instrumental track with a slow beat, low notes. It doesn’t sound familiar, but it’s not like Kaoru listens to much music to begin with.

He counts tiles on the ceiling and listens to the music, and winces when he tries to roll over. _Hospitals_ , he thinks angrily, as thin sheets scratch across his arms. He wonders, if he lifts his fingers, if they’ll be covered in ink stains.

When his grandmother died, Kojiro wrote her name across every notebook in her house, every sheet of paper that was blank enough for ink. He would have written it across the walls, across his body, over the ceilings and down the street. His mother smoked a cigarette at her funeral, and Kaoru traced the name on her grave for hours afterwards.

He traces the katakana over the skin of his arms when he’s anxious. Something to do with the hands she gifted her. Something to remember her by.

_Sakurayashiki. Carla._

_Carla, play me to sleep,_ he says. The unfamiliar tile of the ceiling stares back.

He wonders if the residents on the other side of the wall can hear them. He’d heard a woman earlier, the slightly higher pitched tremble of a boy’s voice. He’d sounded young, maybe Miya’s age. He wonders which of them is his wall-mate, and which is haunting the room uselessly while someone they love resigns themselves to sitting, and suffering.

He wonders, now, if he’s doing all the haunting on his own.

Kaoru remembers his grandmother. He remembers loving her, promising to remember her. He tries to remember all the people he loves, now.

He tries to roll over again, tries not to think about the one person that hasn’t come to see him in the hospital. The one person he needs to see, the one person that Kaoru never, never thought he’d have to leave behind.

Sometimes, he hears the door shake—it’s a poor thing, barely hanging on to its hinges—and he tries not to look for dark suits, polished shoes. He tries not to look for familiar scarlet eyes.

Kaoru’s memories of Adam used to be concrete things, daydreams he could slip into if he tried hard enough. His teenage years are shadowed by some golden veneer, the pink hues of late afternoons and slate grey skateparks. You’re always changing when you’re that young. Always growing, learning. But Adam… Adam never changed.

Or, he shouldn’t have. He _wouldn’t_ have, not with Kaoru at his side, not when he had hands always ready to bandage his scrapes, not when there were arms to catch him if he ever needed it. It was always Kaoru getting hurt at the end of the day, always Adam’s arms under his shoulders and his thighs when they had to be carted off to hospitals. He really was just like his grandmother, in the end.

But something has broken now, in Ainosuke. Something Kaoru cannot fix. He was strong, stronger than any of them, dedicated, a helping hand and a curled smile even when you were laid out on the ground. Something has taken him, made him sharp, acrid, heartless. Kaoru thought his best friend was living under Adam’s skin.

Maybe it took him too long to see that _hollow_ is the way Adam has always been.

Kaoru loved skating, loved late nights, loved bruises and broken bones and the world condensed down to a railing, a sloping street. He loved the scrapes, the ice packs, the wind in his hair.

He loved being free. He loved Adam.

“Carla,” Kaoru croaks again, as the ceiling starts to swim. “Stop.”

The music Carla is braying lulls into silence, a distant beeping, the rustling of paper-thin sheets under Kaoru’s broken, battered body. The silence is suffocating, drowning, and Kaoru hasn’t had this much trouble sleeping since—

 _America?_ Kaoru says, golden in his daydream, his voice echoing around in his own head. _You can’t just—just leave us like that—_

 _Why not?_ Adam asks. His voice is light, unaffected, like he’s telling Kaoru and Kojiro he’ll simply be gone for a day on business trip. _The world will move on without us, you know_. _We can’t forget we have to grow up._

 _Bullshit!_ The teenage mirage of himself yells. Kaoru himself flinches at the ceiling, gripping the bar of the hospital bed. He remembers looking desperately to Kojiro, an arm on Kaoru’s, trying to keep him calm. Adam is a step away, but he may as well be across the ocean already.

 _Ainosuke,_ Kaoru says, breaks their own rules, the secrets that hide them from the outside world when there is a board under their feet. _You can’t leave us. Not when we—not when I—_

Kaoru stares at the ceiling tiles. Carla is awaiting instruction.

He remembers feeling alone, feeling like the world was crashing, like his paradise had come undone and all that had been left was—

 _Are you okay?_ Kojiro whispers in his head.

Kaoru shakes his head. All that had been left was Kojiro.

Kojiro who picked up the pieces, Kojiro who didn’t let him wallow, who snapped Kaoru back to his own head when suddenly his memory was all he had. In Adam’s wake was Kojiro’s arms, the press of his head against Kaoru’s chest.

Kojiro was there, when they were children. He sat by Kaoru’s side after his grandmother died and held his hand when Kaoru had offered no kind of consolation, nothing to make him feel at ease. Kojiro hadn’t minded. He never seemed to mind.

Kojiro yelled at his mother once, for smoking. They all knew Kaoru hated it. Kojiro was the first to bring it up. He yelled at Kaoru, for holding on as tight as he did. They both knew it. Kojiro was always the first one to bring it up.

Kaoru doesn’t have to remember Kojiro, because it seems he has no reason to forget, and Kojiro will be damned if he slips far enough away that _memory_ is all that will hold them together in the end.

Someone sneezes down the hallway, Kaoru runs out of tiles to count. Kaoru runs out of memories to haunt him.

“Carla,” Kaoru says, voice even, as he shoves desperately at the arm rests of his bed that now feel like the bars of a cage. “Take me home.”

\--

Kojiro calls him stupid. Kaoru knows he’s right. He gets mad anyway.

He gets mad because of a lot of things, but really he’s just grateful to be free of the blank walls, even if he’s wheelchair bound and staring at an empty bottle of wine.

“I should take you back to the hospital—“

“Don’t,” Kaoru grunts. “You know how I feel about hospitals.”

Kojiro knows how he feels about everything. He knows his favorite wine, his propensity to get lost in numbers and broad strokes. Kojiro hadn’t even the decency to look surprised when Kaoru had come rolling through the door, even if he had made a few tasteless mummy jokes.

Kaoru wonders how it should make him feel that nothing he does will surprise Kojiro anymore.

Coming back to his restaurant though, seeing the light in the distance that let Kaoru know Kojiro was still waiting up… That was the first time since he’d been hospitalized Kaoru had felt something like peace. Even if Kojiro had stared, and grumbled, he’d let Kaoru in the way he always does. The way, Kaoru thinks, he always will.

He wonders, for a moment, if Adam would have ever done the same.

“It’s empty,” he says, frowning at Kojiro instead. The wine is a good distraction, considering he hadn’t let himself take the pain meds they’d been offering. It’s not like he’s particularly in any kind of pain, considering he’s been dealing with injuries similar to these since he started skating as a _child,_ but it certainly can’t hurt.

“ _You_ bring the bottle next time, then,” Kojiro snaps, even as he storms off to fetch something Kaoru will like.

Kaoru glances down at his empty cup, and flexes a bandaged hand, listening to the sound of Kojiro stomping around and mumbling about an _ungrateful escapee, high strung techheads_. He feels a smile pull at his lips, the sound of Kojiro’s voice fading into the rumble of his voice, like soft melodies... low notes.

Kojiro carried him to the hospital. Kojiro always carries him to the hospital. Kaoru always wonders why he never gets hurt, and Kojiro says some nonsense about how he must just be studier than Kaoru is.

Adam used to carry him to the hospital. Kaoru curls his lip.

Who is Kaoru remembering, again? Who is he trying to make happy?

He puts his head on his arms and closes his eyes, and it’s by no means _comfortable_ , but it’s certainly better than his old, empty room. Kojiro complains more, brings out more wine, and Kaoru feels like his brain is split, half conscious and half not. He could fall asleep like this, he thinks.

He might have anyway, considering the way his body pulls tight when fingers brush his forehead, tucking strands of stray hair behind his ear. Kojiro’s hands are familiar. Safe. They hold him together far more than they should.

Kojiro tells him he loves him sometimes. When things are quiet, slow. When the restaurant is empty, when Kojiro knocks on Kaoru’s door in the middle of the night. When they were teenagers, it meant less than it does now. Because Kojiro always loves him when Kaoru needs him most. That terrifies Kaoru, he thinks.

“I should take you back to the hospital,” Kojiro mumbles again.

“You won’t,” Kaoru grunts into his arm. He opens his eye, and meets a clearheaded gaze, and wonders how long he was sitting, waiting for Ainosuke’s apologies, the light to come back to his eyes when Kojiro never left him in the first place. “You can’t bear to leave me alone.”

“And you can’t _bear_ to stop terrorizing my place of buisness.”

Kaoru laughs, quietly, and feels pain shoot through his shoulder, and crawl down his arm. This is how he’ll remember Adam now, he thinks. And, maybe, how he’ll remember Kojiro. “No more hospitals,” Kaoru sighs. Kojiro presses his hands to his face. “Take me home.”

Kojiro sighs, but it’s a light thing. “You’re lucky I like you,” he mutters, and Kaoru turns his head to the side with a smile.

“I love you too,” Kaoru mumbles, and lets Kojiro’s voice carry him off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/tobi_yos) talking about sk8 if you wanna come by, or if you wanna drop me a line about matchablossom because... I'm literally always willing to listen.
> 
> Later!


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